“Ought I to scold him, sweetheart?” Jerome’s lips parted in an insinuating smile that showed his flashing teeth. “Must I play the stern father?”
She did not reply at once. Then, with an undertone of bitterness, of a desire to punish him, she blurted out: “Do you realize that Jenny very nearly died?”
He let go his son and took a step towards her, and such was the consternation on his face that she was ready to forgive him on the spot, if only to wipe out the distress that she had deliberately caused him.
“But she’s much better now. The danger’s past!” she exclaimed.
She forced herself to smile, so as to reassure him the sooner, and the smile was tantamount to a capitulation. She was aware of it. Everything seemed to be conspiring against her dignity.
“Go and see her,” she added, noticing that Jerome’s hands were shaking. “But please don’t wake her.”
Some minutes passed. Mme. de Fontanin sat down. Jerome came back on tip-toe, shutting the door very carefully. His face was radiant with affection; no trace of apprehension remained. He was laughing again, and his eyes twinkled.
“Ah, if you’d seen her just now! Charming! She’s lying on her side, her cheek resting on her hand.” His fingers sketched in air the graceful outlines. “She has grown thinner, but that’s almost a good thing, really; it makes her all the prettier, don’t you think so?”
She did not answer. He was staring at her with a puzzled air.
“Why, Thérèse, you’ve gone quite white!”
She rose, and almost ran to the mirror above the mantelpiece. It was true; in those two days of anxiety her hair, which till then had been fair, with a light silver sheen, had turned completely white over the temples. And now Daniel understood what had seemed to him different, inexplicable since his homecoming. Mme. de Fontanin scanned her reflected self, uncertain of her feelings but unable to stifle a regret. Then, in the mirror, she saw Jerome’s face smiling towards her and unwittingly she found a consolation in his smile. He seemed amused, and lightly touched a vagrant silver lock that floated in the lamplight.
“Nothing could suit you better, sweetheart; nothing could better set off—what shall I call it?—the youngness of your eyes.”
When she answered, the words, seemingly an excuse, served to mask her secret pleasure.
“Oh, Jerome, I’ve been through some awful days and nights! On Wednesday we’d tried everything, and we’d lost hope. I was all alone. I was so frightened!”
“Poor darling!” he cried impulsively. “I’m dreadfully sorry; I could so easily have come back. I was at Lyon on that business you know about.” He spoke with such assurance that for a moment she began to search her memory. “I’d completely forgotten that you hadn’t my address. And besides, I’d only gone away for twenty-four hours; I’ve even wasted my return ticket.”
Just then it flashed across his mind that he had given Thérèse no money for a long while. Annoying! He had no money coming in for another three weeks. He reckoned up what he had on him and unthinkingly made a grimace which, however, he promptly explained away.
“And to think that all my trouble was practically wasted—I just couldn’t put that deal through! I went on hoping till the last day, but here I am back again, with empty pockets! Those fat Lyon bankers are infernally hard to deal with, an unbelieving lot.” He launched into a story of his experiences, letting his fertile imagination run away with him, without a trace of embarrassment; he had the born story-teller’s delight in his inventions.
Daniel, as he listened, felt for the first time a sort of shame for his father. Then, for no reason, without any apparent relevance, he thought of the man the woman at Marseille had told him about, her “old boy” as she had called him—a married man, in business, who always came in the afternoon, she had explained, because he never went out in the evening without “his missus.” In the face of his mother, who was listening too, there was something that baffled him. Their eyes met. What did the mother read in her son’s eyes? Did she see far within, into thoughts to which as yet Daniel himself had given no definite form? When she spoke there was an abruptness in her tone that betrayed her annoyance.
“Now run away to bed, my dear; you’re absolutely tired out.”
He obeyed. But just as he stooped to kiss her, a picture rose before him of his mother so cruelly forsaken while Jenny was on her deathbed. And his affection was enhanced by a realization of the distress he had caused her. He embraced her tenderly, murmuring in her ear:
“Forgive me.”
She had been waiting for those words since his return, and now she could not feel the happiness she would have felt, had he uttered them sooner. Daniel was conscious of this, and inwardly blamed his father for it. Mme. de Fontanin, however, could not help feeling a grievance against her son; why had he not spoken sooner, while they were alone together?
Half in boyish playfulness, half out of mere gluttony, Jerome had gone up to the tray and was examining the “spread” with comically pursed lips.
“My word, and who are all these nice things for?”
His laughter never sounded quite natural; he would throw back his head, slewing round his pupils into the corners of his eyes, and then emit in quick succession three rather theatrical Ha’s: “Hal Ha! Ha!”
He had drawn up a stool to the table and was already busy with the tea-pot.
“Don’t drink that tea, it’s almost cold,” Mme. de Fontanin said, and lit the spirit-lamp under the kettle. When he protested, she added, but unsmilingly: “No—I insist!”
They were alone. To attend to the tea, she had come up to the table, and the bitter-sweet perfume of the lavender and verbena scent he used came to her nostrils. He looked up at her with a half-smile; his look conveyed at once affection and repentance. Keeping his slice of buttered toast in one hand, like a hungry schoolboy, he slipped an arm round his wife’s waist with a free-and-easy deftness that showed long experience in the amorous art. Mme. de Fontanin freed herself abruptly; she knew her weakness, and dreaded it. When he withdrew his arm she came back to finish making the tea, then moved away once more.
She wore a look of dignity and sadness, but somehow his complete insouciance had taken the sting out of her resentment. She studied his appearance, surreptitiously, in the mirror. His amber-coloured skin, his almond eyes, the graceful poise of his body, the slightly exotic refinement of his dress, and his languid airs gave him an oriental charm. She remembered having written in her diary, during their engagement: My Beloved is beautiful as an Indian Prince. And even tonight she was seeing him through the same eyes as in those far-off days. He was sitting slantwise on a stool that was too low for him, and stretching his legs towards the fire. Daintily his fingers, tipped by well-manicured nails, were taking up slices of toast, one after another, and gilding them with honey. As, bending above the plate, he ate them, his white teeth flashed. When he had finished eating, he drank his tea at a gulp, rose with a dancer’s suppleness, and ensconced himself in an arm-chair. He behaved exactly as if nothing had happened and he were living here now just as he had always done. The dog jumped onto his knee and he began patting it. His left ring-finger bore a large sardonyx ring left him by his mother, an ancient cameo on which the milk-white figure of a Ganymede rose from a deep black background. The gold had worn down with the years and the ring kept on slipping to and fro as he moved his hand. His wife watched all his gestures intently.
“Do you mind if I light a cigarette, sweetheart?”
Incorrigible he was—but how charming! He had a way of his own of pronouncing that word “sweetheart,” letting the syllables flutter on his lips, like a kiss. His silver cigarette-case shone between his fingers; she recognized so well the little brittle click it made and, yes, he had still that habit of tapping his cigarette on the back of his hand before putting it into his mouth. And how well she knew them, too, those long, veined hands that the lighted match changed suddenly to two translucent, flame-red shells!
She steel
ed herself to calmness as she cleared the tea-table. This last week had broken her, and she realized it just at the moment she needed all her courage. She sat down. She no longer knew what to think; she could not clearly discern what the Spirit wished of her. Was it God’s will that she should stay beside this sinner who, even in his worst lapses, always remained amenable to the promptings of his kindly heart, so that she might guide him one day towards a better life? No, her immediate duty was to safeguard the home, the children. Little by little she was vanquishing her weakness, and it was a relief to find herself more resolute than she had foreseen. The decision she had come to during Jerome’s absence—when, after prayer, a still small voice within had counselled her—held good.
Jerome had been watching her for some time with meditative eyes. Now his face took on an expression of intense sincerity. Only too well she knew that seeming-timid smile, that look of circumspection; and they dismayed her. For, though she had a knack of deciphering at any moment, almost without conscious effort, what lay behind her husband’s frequent changes of expression, all the same her intuition always ended by being held up at a certain definite point, beyond which lay a quicksand of uncertainties. How often she had asked herself: What kind of man is he really, under the surface?
“I see how it is.” There was a touch of rather perfunctory regret in Jerome’s voice. “I can see you judge me severely, Thérèse. Oh, I understand you—only too well. If another man behaved like that, I’d judge him as you do. I’d think of him as being a scoundrel. Yes, a scoundrel—why mince words? Ah, how on earth can I make you understand …?”
“What’s the good?” she broke in miserably, casting him a naiively beseeching look. Never, alas, could she conceal her feelings!
He was smoking, lying well back in the arm-chair; he had crossed his legs, and the ankle of the leg he was indolently swinging was well in evidence.
“Don’t worry, Thérèse; I’m not going to argue about it. The facts are there, and the facts condemn me. And yet … perhaps there are other explanations for it all than the all too obvious ones.” He smiled sadly. He had a weakness for expatiating on his faults, and invoking arguments of a moral order—a procedure which perhaps appeased what was left of his Protestant upbringing. “Often,” he said, “a bad deed springs from motives of a different kind. One may seem to be out merely to gratify, quite shamelessly, one’s instincts, but sometimes, indeed quite often, one is actually giving way to an emotion that is not a bad one—to pity, for instance. When one causes suffering to someone whom one loves, the reason sometimes is that one’s sorry for someone else, someone who’s in trouble, or of a lower walk of life—to whom a little kindness might mean salvation.”
A picture rose before her of the girl she had seen sobbing by the riverside. And other memories took form, of Mariette, of Noémie… . Her eyes were held by the movement of his patent-leather shoe, swinging to and fro, now lit up by the lamplight, now in shadow. She remembered the early days of their marriage—those “business dinners,” so urgent and so unforeseen, from which he had come back at dawn, only to shut himself up in his room and sleep till evening. And all the anonymous letters she had glanced through, then torn up, burned, or ground under her heel, but without being able to stamp out their rankling maleficence. She had seen Jerome seduce her maids, and turn the heads of her friends, one by one. He had made a void around her. She remembered the reproaches which at first she had ventured to address to him, and the many occasions on which, without making any “scene,” she had spoken to him frankly but with indulgence—only to find herself confronted by a being at the mercy of his every impulse, self-centred and evasive, who began by denying everything with puritanical indignation and, immediately after, vowed smilingly that he would never do it again.
“Yes, indeed,” he was saying, “I’ve treated you abominably. Abominably! Don’t let’s be afraid of words. And yet I love you, Thérèse, with all my soul; I look up to you and I’m sorry for you. There’s been nothing in my life, nothing which at any time, even for a moment, could stand beside my love for you, the only truly deep and permanent love I’ve ever felt
“Yes, my way of living is disgusting; I don’t defend it, I’m ashamed of it. But really, sweetheart, you’re doing me an injustice; yes, for all your sense of justice, you’re unfair if you judge me by my acts. I admit my … my lapses, but they aren’t all of me. Oh, I’m explaining myself badly, I know; I feel you aren’t listening to me. It’s all so terribly complicated, far more so than I can ever explain, in fact. I only get glimpses of it myself, in flashes… .”
He fell silent and leaned forward, his eyes focused on the void, as if he had worn himself out in a vain effort to attain for a moment the uttermost truth about his life. Then he raised his head and Mme. de Fontanin felt his gaze lingering on her face, that careless glance of his, seemingly so light, but endowed with a strange power of fascination for the eyes of others. It was as if his gaze drew their eyes towards it, and held them trapped inescapably for a moment, then released them—like a magnet attracting, lifting, and letting fall a weight too heavy for it. Once again their eyes met and parted. She was thinking: “Yes, you are better than the life you lead.” But she merely shrugged her shoulders.
“You don’t believe me?” he murmured.
“Oh, I’m quite ready to believe you.” She tried to speak in a detached tone. “I’ve done it so many times before … but that isn’t the point. Guilty or not, responsible or not, Jerome, you have done wrong, you are doing wrong every day, and will go on doing so. And that state of things can’t be allowed to last. Let us part for good.”
The fact that she had been thinking it over so assiduously during the past four days imparted to her voice an emphasis and harshness that Jerome could not ignore. Seeing his amazement and distress, she hastened to add:
“It’s the children I’m thinking of. So long as they were small, they didn’t understand, and I was the only one who …” On the point of adding “suffered,” a sense of shame prevented her. “The wrong you’ve done me, Jerome, no longer concerns me only and my … personal feelings. It comes in here with you, it’s in the very air of our home, the air my children breathe. I will not allow this state of things to go on. Look what Daniel did this week! May God forgive him, as I’ve forgiven him for hurting me so cruelly. He is sorry for it; his heart is still uncorrupted.” Her eyes lit with a flash of pride that was almost a challenge. “But I’m sure it was your example that led him astray. Would he have gone off so light-heartedly, without a thought for my anxiety, if he hadn’t seen you so often going away from us … on ‘business’?” She rose, took an uncertain step towards the fireplace, and saw in the mirror her white hair; then, bending a little towards her husband, without looking at him, she went on speaking. “I’ve been thinking deeply about it, Jerome. I have suffered a great deal this week and I have prayed and pondered. I’ve not the least wish to reproach you. In any case, I’m feeling so dreadfully tired tonight, I don’t wish to talk about it. I only ask you to face the facts. You’ll have to admit I’m right, that there’s no other way out. Life in common”—she caught herself up—”what remains to us of our life in common, little though it is, is still too much. Yes, Jerome, too much.” She drew herself erect, rested her hands on the marble mantelpiece, and, stressing each word with a movement of her head and shoulders, said gravely: “I will not bear it any longer.”
Jerome made no answer, but, before she could retreat, he had slipped to her feet and pressed his face against her knee, like a child pleading to be forgiven.
“How could I possibly separate from you?” he murmured abjectly. “How could I live without my children? I’d rather blow my brains out!”
She felt almost like smiling, so naively melodramatic was the gesture with which he aimed his forefinger at his forehead. Thérèse’s arm was hanging at her side; grasping her wrist, he covered it with kisses. Gently she freed her hand and listlessly, hardly knowing what she was doing, began to stroke his forehea
d with her fingertips. The gesture, seemingly maternal, was one of utter, unchangeable detachment. He misinterpreted it and raised his head; but a glance at her face showed him how grievously he was mistaken. She moved away at once, and pointed to a travelling-clock on the bedside table. “Two o’clock. It’s terribly late. No more tonight, please. Tomorrow, perhaps… .”
He glanced at the clock and from it to the double bed with its solitary pillow, made ready for the night.
“I’m afraid you’ll have trouble in finding a cab,” she said.
He made a vague, puzzled movement; obviously the idea of going out again that night had never entered his head. Was it not his home here? His bedroom was, as ever, awaiting him, just across the passage. How often had he returned like this, in the small hours, after a five-or six-day escapade! On such occasions he would appear next morning at the breakfast table in pyjamas, but very spick and span, joking and laughing rather loud, so as to quell his children’s unspoken mistrust, which he felt but did not understand.
Used to his ways, Mme. de Fontanin had followed on his face the trend his thoughts had taken; but she did not waver, and opened the door leading into the hall. He walked out, inwardly discomfited, but heroically keeping the appearance of an old friend saying goodbye to his hostess.
While he was putting on his overcoat, it occurred to him again that his wife must be short of money. He would have handed over to her such little money as he had, readily enough—though he was not in a position to put himself in funds again. But the thought that such an incident might create an awkward situation, that, after taking the money, she might no longer feel at liberty to show him out so firmly, offended his sense of delicacy. Worse still, Thérèse might suspect him of an ulterior motive.
The Thibaults Page 10
